Musings and History

Quote of the day:
When speaking of Richard Nixon he said:
“He is a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream.”
                                                Hunter “Gonzo” Thompson

The astrophysicists worldwide are all agog because they have found a solar system with 7 planets orbiting a red dwarf sun. This means that some of the planets would fall into the “Goldilocks” category. It means that certain planets would be the right distance from the sun to allow the right range of temperatures and have the possibility of liquid water, both are necessities for life as we know it. They are also happy that the system is only 40 light years from Earth, a mere blink of the eye when it is compared with the size of the universe. A light year is the distance that light can travel in one year. The problem is the age of humans and time itself. Scientists know that we have not developed any means of propulsion that will allow acceleration to anywhere near the speed of light. Even if a method was conceived that would allow 1/10th the speed of light it would take 400 years to get there and 400 back. 1/10th the speed of light is about 67 million miles per hour, y'all. It also would take a hundred year to accelerate to that speed. Time is our enemy. We will have to figure out a way to make people live longer or put them into suspended animation otherwise there will be 5 generations to live and die aboard the spacecraft before it gets there. The length of time that a living being can be put into suspended animation is not known. Einstein said it is possible to manipulate the time/space continuum and travel in time but no one has yet figured out how. Until we solve these problems...we ain't going no where. Just remember this, light from those planets that we are seeing now is 40 years old. The planets and their sun may not be there any longer. If we send an electronic signal to them it will take 40 years to get there. It boggle the mind, y'all.

                        This Date in History   February 28

1784 On this date John Wesley established the first Methodist church in America in colonial Georgia. Wesley was a devout Anglican but after the defeat of the British during the American Revolutionary War the Anglican Church abandoned the United States and Wesley felt that he had to replace the Anglican Church so he devised the Methodical Anglicans or Methodists. While in Georgia he became involved with a religious sect mostly from Germany called the Moravians. This was a turning point in Wesley’s life because he admitted that for the first time that he felt the presence of God was at one of those meeting that he attended. While keeping touch with the Moravians he sought the advice of fellow Cambridge graduate George Whitefield. While at Cambridge Wesley and his brother Charles had founded the “Holy Club”. John Wesley’s teachings were not allowed in any Anglican Church so he preached out in the open and over a period of years he had gathered a large following. He finally realized that there had to be more evangelicals than himself along with an administrative staff. His only problem was that his new church had no bishops. He was still used to the Anglican way of things where a minister must be ordained by the”laying on of hands” by a bishop. So John decided that he would ordain the ministers himself and the first two were Dr. John Coke and Francis Asbury and as the saying goes, the rest is history.

1864 US Cavalry Commander Hugh Judson Kilpatrick and Colonel Ulrich Dahlgren are tasked with riding into Richmond and freeing the Union prisoners of war. It was Dahlgren’s job to release the prisoners while Kilpatrick provided cover. They had one additional job and that was to tell every Johnny Reb they met that President Lincoln had offered amnesty and restoration of property to those that would lay down their arms and swear allegiance to the United States. To provide a diversion two divisions of cavalry one led by General John Sedgwick and the other led by Colonel George A. Custer would made raid into the western parts of Virginia. On this date Sedgwick, Custer, Kilpatrick and Dahlgren parted company and went about their assignments. Dahlgren was supposed to approach Richmond from the west and Kilpatrick from the northwest. Kilpatrick arrived of March 1st with CSA General Wade Hampton III and his howling, wild-eyed Confederate Cavalry hot on his tail. Kilpatrick knows he is danger of annihilation and turns his ass back north which leaves Dahlgren cut off. In the mean time Dahlgren had hired a local guide to take his cavalry to the shallowest part of the James River for crossing into Richmond. The guide instead leads him to the deepest and swiftest current part of the river. The infuriated Dahlgren hanged the guide on the spot. Dahlgren had no choice but to backtrack out of there knowing the Confederates knew he was there. Not only that, by now he had found out that Kilpatrick had been routed and he was on his own. Dahlgren’s cavalry was ambushed time and time again on their way out and they were nearly cut to pieces. There is no record of a Confederate soldier taking Lincoln’s offer of amnesty and restoration. They were a hard-headed bunch.

1993 Earlier a squabble occurred between two people trying to organize the Mount Carmel Church. One of the squabblers was Vernon Howell who claimed to be God and therefore his children would be children of God. The other guy said that to prove who should lead the church would be the one that could dig up a corpse from a graveyard. Howell nixed that idea and in fact went to the police and told them that the other guy was out digging in graveyards. The police did not want anything to do with a religious disagreement. Finally, the two settle it the Christian way, they had a gun fight and Howell wins so it must be God’s will. Howell changed his name to David Koresh and called his church the Branch Dravidian. They then buy a compound outside Waco, Texas. One day a delivery man going to the compound drops a package and out rolls hand grenades. The deliveryman goes to the local police who then notified the Alcohol, Tax and Firearms division. The ATF tried to talk Davis Koresh into giving up his considerable stash of weapons and Koresh refuses saying he has the right to bear arms. On this date, the ATF organized a raid of the compound in which 4 ATF agents are killed along with 6 of the faithful inside. The ATF back off and a two month siege ensues. Finally on one very windy day, a US Army tank rolled up to the buildings, poked its cannon through the wall and pumped in a hell of a lot of tear gas. The only problem here is that the tear gas canisters can, and very often do, cause a fire. The building caught fire and in that brisk wind it burns to the ground in minimum time killing 80 of the occupants, men, women and children. There were 11 that escaped the inferno. US Attorney General Janet Reno accepted full responsibility for the disaster because it was she that told the commander of the forces surrounding the compound to get it over with, “We have spent too much money on it already.” Indeed, Janet, indeed.

1881 A section of the US Great Plains had been occupied by Utes, Arapahoes and Cheyenne Indians with virtually no Anglos for centuries. Then gold was discovered near Pike’s Peak in what is now Colorado. Then one of many gold rushes was underway. The gold near Pike’s Peak played out early and so the gold seekers kept moving west to the Rocky Mountains and there they found more gold and silver. On this date, the US Government decided that a new state was needed and they took a piece of Kansas, Utah and New Mexico and came up with a rectangular state and called it the Territory of Colorado.

            Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow